The proliferation of mobile computing devices—such as laptops, smart phones, and tablets—has caused an evolution in the design, manufacture, and capabilities of liquid crystal displays (LCDs). As commonly known, conventional LCDs are comprised of several layers, which can include backlights, diffusers, polarizers, color filters, and, in some cases, a protective cover glass. Recently, however, manufacturers of LCDs have been supplementing the LCDs to include new layers—such as indium tin oxide (ITO) layers—that are conductive and transparent, and enable touch-input to be received and interpreted by mobile computing devices. In particular, these new layers are typically sandwiched between the protective cover glass and the other layers of the LCD to produce a display module that can both display content and receive touch input from a user.
Although advancements have been made to increase the durability of these display modules, they continue to remain highly susceptible to being damaged. For example, despite significant increases that have been made to the overall hardness and rigidity of protective cover glass layers, dropping a mobile computing device from even a few feet can result in the protective cover glass shattering. When this occurs, a user's view of content displayed by the display module can be obstructed—and in some cases can disrupt his or her touch input—thereby rendering the mobile computing device semi or completely inoperable. Notably, when repairing the device, the display module is often wholly discarded and replaced with an entirely new display module, which is unfortunate and wasteful considering that the LCD portion is, in most cases, still fully intact and operational.